Archives for 4.6.10

With our free day in Guangzhou today, a handful of families got together and rented a bus to take us out to Safari Park about 45 minutes from the city. We took a tram (a mercedes tram–I didn’t seem to think this was an important detail. But, Mark has mentioned it several times, so I thought it must be blogworthy.) through the park to see the animals. It’s sorta like the safari ride at Disney’s Animal Kingdom but we saw about 10x as many animals in a much smaller place. Rather than ride the tram, people can pay to drive through the park in their own cars. People were standing up out of their sunroofs trying to get the animals to come right over to their car. We saw one van full of people with their side door open feeding the gazelles right out of the van. PETA would be all over this place. But, we enjoyed it, and all the adopted kids (as well as siblings who were there) really enjoyed the day. The highlights were (1) me feeding a baby white tiger (it cost 30 yuan, about $4) and, of course, (2) admiring the pandas. This was a must do in my opinion, especially since Ashlyn adores pandas and believes that they rome the streets of China. I just couldn’t come to China and not see pandas! Lydia’s favorites were the parrots and the monkeys. 

 

 

We thought it was time to give you a little Lydia 101 so you wouldn’t be illyderate (get it?) since we are coming home soon. Of course, this is coming from people who have been with her for only 9 days, and one of those days we were so sick that I thought I might die in China (okay, a bit of an exaggeration there). Still, here is what we have learned thus far.

1. She’s got a few tricks–smacking her lips, hitting her hand to her mouth while making an “ah” noise, and shaking her head no for no reason.

2. She can say da, ba, and mama.

3. She has a big freckle on her tummy.

4. Although she hated her first bath and then wouldn’t sit in the water her second bath, by her third bath, she realized this was sorta fun. Now, she loves it.

5. Her favorite foods are bread and crackers–who are we kidding, she eats everything we give to her. Tonight that was tomatoes and cucumbers even. 

6. She loves her little blanket (we have named Ren Ren) and sucking her first two fingers on her left hand.

7. She smiles at everybody who talks to her and doesn’t cry often.

8. When she fell down today, she called out for “Mama” which clearly was not me. But, we are working on her understanding that I’m Mama and can comfort her.

9. She loves walking holding onto one of our hands.

10. She doesn’t like her hands touched unless you are holding her hand to walk with her.

11. She sweats like crazy when she takes her bottle and when she sleeps. 

12. She has had a little bit of hard time falling asleep at night. I hold her until she’s asleep and then Daddy puts her in the crib. Although she sleeps restlessly, she sleeps through the night until about 7am.

13. She has the smallest behind you have ever seen. It’s about the size of my fist. We think she should be nicknamed Tiny Hiney or Bitty Bum. Any other ideas?

14.  She likes being upside down and being thrown up into the air. When Daddy does it and then stops, she says “da” very clearly. We think it’s Chinese for “again.”

I’m looking forward to learning more about her as the days go on and having our other three learn too. We have a big day tomorrow–our oath at the U.S. consulate. After that, we just pick up her visa on Thursday and then we are finished here and have permission to bring this little girl home. Can’t believe it.

Offices and schools were closed today, but shops were not (they close for nearly nothing). So, we set out with the families from our agency here with us and visited the medicinal herb market and the pet market. Yes, contrary to what some may have heard, there are some pets in China. We learned tonight from our friendly salesman Jack at a local place that families are limited to one dog only and will “have a problem” if they have more than one. He made a joke about too many people and too many dogs and how they limit both. These markets were CRAZY. We saw dried deer tendons, snakes, sea horses, and (my personal fave) frogs (I thought they were dried rats at first. yuck!). They sold live scorpions and turtles and fish and chickens. One family pulled up to a shop on a motorcycle, bought a fish right there without getting off their bike, and waited while the lady cut it up for them right there on the sidewalk. We watched as a shopkeeper killed a chicken right there for a customer. It was an education. The pet market was slightly less icky–adorable kittens, baby ducks, turtles, crabs, bunnies, even chipmunks! We saw one guy ride up to a shopkeeper with a handled bag full of kittens. He sold them to the shopkeeper for 6 yuan each (about $.90) then rode away. The shopkeeper will turn around and sell them for a little more than that. We saw quite a few loose cats today–shopkeepers like to keep them around to get rid of the rats. Oh my. We continued onto a more mainstream shopping area that was just mobbed. Check out that picture Mark took of the crowd there. Can you see why we’d stand out here? We refrained from eating lunch there though–the fried squid a lot of folks were having just didn’t look so good to us.

Guangzhou is under some serious construction right now which makes walking around a little difficult, and everything is pretty messy. They are working super hard to make this place look amazing for the Asian games being held here in November. Mark took this picture of the guy working from our hotel room window. In the close up, it doesn’t look so bad. But, check out how high up this guy was. Yikes.